Kagi had a post discussing this which made the front page of HN about a month ago [1]:
> Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi’s ad-free subscription model.
From the book "Enshittification: it's not just you—the internet sucks now. Here's why, and here's how we can disenshittify it.":
"But this isn’t merely an unpaid, unsolicited endorsement for Kagi. The point of this story came a month later, when Jason Koebler, ex–editor in chief of VICE Motherboard and cofounder of 404 Media, published a glowing review of Kagi. In that review, he revealed that Kagi was actually primarily powered by Google. Kagi was paying Google for access to its back-end servers and its database of web pages, but was applying a different ranking algorithm to the results."
For the purposes of the discussion at hand, yes some results do ultimately come from Google, just via third-party SERP providers rather than Kagi paying Google for access since Google doesn't offer their own public API (and neither does Bing anymore).
> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results (SERP meaning search engine results page). These providers serve major enterprises (according to their websites) including Nvidia, Adobe, Samsung, Stanford, DeepMind, Uber, and the United Nations.
> This is not our preferred solution. We plan to exit it as soon as direct, contractual access becomes available. There is no legitimate, paid path to comprehensive Google or Bing results for a company like Kagi. Our position is clear: open the search index, make it available on FRAND terms, and enable rapid innovation in the marketplace.
This is false.
Kagi had a post discussing this which made the front page of HN about a month ago [1]:
> Google does not offer a public search API. The only available path is an ad-syndication bundle with no changes to result presentation - the model Startpage uses. Ad syndication is a non-starter for Kagi’s ad-free subscription model.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46708678
From the book "Enshittification: it's not just you—the internet sucks now. Here's why, and here's how we can disenshittify it.":
"But this isn’t merely an unpaid, unsolicited endorsement for Kagi. The point of this story came a month later, when Jason Koebler, ex–editor in chief of VICE Motherboard and cofounder of 404 Media, published a glowing review of Kagi. In that review, he revealed that Kagi was actually primarily powered by Google. Kagi was paying Google for access to its back-end servers and its database of web pages, but was applying a different ranking algorithm to the results."
For the purposes of the discussion at hand, yes some results do ultimately come from Google, just via third-party SERP providers rather than Kagi paying Google for access since Google doesn't offer their own public API (and neither does Bing anymore).
Some very dodgy wording here.
> Because direct licensing isn’t available to us on compatible terms, we - like many others - use third-party API providers for SERP-style results (SERP meaning search engine results page). These providers serve major enterprises (according to their websites) including Nvidia, Adobe, Samsung, Stanford, DeepMind, Uber, and the United Nations.
> This is not our preferred solution. We plan to exit it as soon as direct, contractual access becomes available. There is no legitimate, paid path to comprehensive Google or Bing results for a company like Kagi. Our position is clear: open the search index, make it available on FRAND terms, and enable rapid innovation in the marketplace.
https://help.kagi.com/kagi/why-kagi/kagi-vs-google.html